Response - Essay Example

A Review of ‘You Can’t Plan a Market’, ‘As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes’, and ‘Have Car, Needs Brief? In Russia, Barter is Back’ At the back of the aid barrier that separates prosperous nations from poor, the aid society is saturated with models, techniques, and plans to address the real and concrete needs of impoverished countries. But according to William Easterly (2006), in Chapter 3: You Can’t Plan a Market of his book, these efforts are only sound in a central planning approach where in the solution to the issues of poverty is a major governmental mechanism to determine volumes of various development products and services by executive decree.

The planning approach is afterward associated with discarded theories in the past, like the assumption that poverty is caused by a ‘poverty trap’, which can merely be mitigated by a substantial transfer of aid from wealthy nations to poor countries to bridge a ‘financing gap’ for underdeveloped nations (Easterly 2006). The inflow of aid is apparently managed by this same mechanism of planning. This is not good for poor countries since, in the past, poverty has never been thwarted by a central planning apparatus.

Poverty is alleviated by ‘searchers’ who look for answers using an experimental approach. Democratically liable policymakers and companies in private markets are examples of searchers. Aid should not target openly and directly poverty. The foremost strategy for alleviating poverty is local development efforts rooted in the mechanism of companies and actors in free markets. Removed from the wide-ranging economic development mission of planners, aid can accomplish a lot more than it is accomplishing at present to resolve the problems of poverty.

China is a remarkable example of economic progress. However, according to Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley (2007), the exceptional urbanization and economic progress of China have been achieved at the detriment of the environment. At present, vast numbers of Chinese are suffering from polluted water and air. As stated in a World Bank report, “only 1 percent of China’s urban population of 560 million now breathes air considered safe by the European Union” (Kahn & Yardley 2007, 3). Even though uninhibited progress can damage the environment on which every economy fully relies on, the unrelenting pursuit of progress is the foundation of contemporary Chinese life.

The ultimate paradox is that even the leading environmental officers of China agree that economic progress should outweigh protection of the ecosystem for years to come. As stated by Kahn and Yardley (2007, 2), “And there are ample signs that the leadership is either unwilling or unable to make fundamental changes.” If economic progress halts, China will definitely relapse to the more cost-effective, untidy, and outdated production processes. There will be political disorder which will then completely deflect the attention of everyone from the environment.

Russia, on the other hand, is facing a different dilemma—the continuous collapse of the economy due to intensified barterization. According to Ellen Barry (2009), Sterligov’s barter business paradigm has been used all over Russia, especially in Moscow. The prominent Russian capitalist helped the country in the past surpass the absence of financial liquidity. However, because of increasing barterization it becomes currently impossible for Russia to cut down the budget deficit. In several cases, barter is a logical adjustment to circumstances of the changing economy.

This originates from defects in market institutions at times of continuous change, most apparently absence of consumer trust and loyalty in products sold in shops and difficulties with manufacture marketing. Ultimately, barter is one of the strategies by which a number of Russians are managing to survive and in several instances even thriving under the current situations, even though the range of dealings taking place within the rule of barter suggests that such dealings rest on a scale between cash-based market transaction and gift-giving.

References Barry, E. “Have Car, Need Briefs? In Russia, Barter is Back” New York Times, (2009): 1-4. Easterly, W.R. The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. New York: The Penguin Press, 2006. Kahn, J. & J. Yardley. “As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes” New York Times, (2007): 1-9.